Scholars, Practitioners, and Leaders in Religion Respond to Contemporary Events

Author: Anna Czarnik-Neimeyer

Anna Czarnik-Neimeyer, MA, is a social justice educator & writer, and founder/CEO of Bridgebuilder Consulting, bridging divisions to build better organizations. Anna cultivates unlikely comrades through trainings, keynotes, courses, scholarly writing, and popular press, towards innovation at corporations, schools, churches, nonprofits, and publications. Former board member for the bell hooks Institute at Berea College, KY and OUT There Adventures, her own work has been published through Ms. Magazine, American Camp Association, USA Today, Sojourners, Teaching Tolerance (Southern Poverty Law Center), Religion News Service, and Parker Palmer’s Center for Courage & Renewal. In 2017 she hit the road on a yearlong global consulting tour, “Tour d’Justice.”
Czarnik-Neimeyer has founded innovative startup communities including Pride@Church ally trainings, and #WriteHereWriteNow author groups. She is an Editor at the justice+faith publication Religious Response. She was the April 2017 inaugural Visiting Scholar in Residence at the bell hooks Institute in at Berea College, KY as well as March 2017 International Visiting Faculty in Residence at Lincoln Community International Baccalaureate School in Accra, Ghana. Czarnik-Neimeyer’s blog “A Place on Earth” discusses worldmaking AKA “how can we use innovation/reflection/humor to make this world better and more just?” Presenting frequently at both the Association for Experiential Education (AEE) and National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), Czarnik-Neimeyer was named NWSA’s 2016 WCC Emerging Leader.
Anna is from the Midwestern United States, but finds homes and loved ones around the world, especially in Washington state and New York City.

I was ready to march today on #MLK50. I got my signs together and contacted comrades and gathered venue information. In my final research, right before departing, I learned this particular small event I was planning to attend was factioned and problematic. It was not organized with accountability to the communities for which it claimed to advocate, had consistently undermined efforts in other activist groups, and the sources where I had originally learned about it were unreliable. This happens sometimes. This happens OFTEN in the White Moderate that…Continue Reading “Can’t March? Can’t Vote? 10 Justice Strategies from MLK’s Mountaintop Speech”→

Cross-posted at my website. Yesterday I talked with Margaret Atwood. We asked each other questions. We smiled at one another. Her eyes are sharp. Her mind is sharper. I asked her about religion. I’ll tell you a story, then I’ll tell you what Atwood said. This is the Story I first read The Handmaid’s Tale a decade ago in a Feminist Theology class. Studying liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez and hardcore social justice nuns and professors like Joan Chittister and Mary Daly, we small crew…Continue Reading “I asked Margaret Atwood about religion, and this is what she said.”→

I gave this talk on teaching faculty at Holden Village right after the Orlando Shootings—I wrote it after the Charleston shootings the year before and when Orlando happened in a way that felt so similar, In sacred space, I couldn’t not respond. As we see violence almost daily in mosques, synagogues, airplanes, and other places supposed to be safe, we join together in lament and action. Please listen and let me know what you think.